The hardware specs on these Home/SOHO NAS units are rather anemic. I built my own a couple years ago based on an i3-2120, 8GB RAM, and NAS4free. Much better performance than any Atom-based NAS unit.Reply

I used to agree with you, but I picked up a Synology DS214+ recently and realised that these days, if you just want to be able to saturate a gigabit link when shuffling files, and stream media (with the exception of hardware transcoding to non-PC devices, natch) then something like 'this' is a much, much easier path.

Especially as I build/fix/generally look after servers and general IT stuff for a living - last thing I want to be doing when I get home is build *another* RAID array...

It's getting to the stage where these devices are good enough for most of us - IE power users - and only edge cases (such as transcoded streaming) really need a dedicated, self-built server.

What if the device decides to quit working and you're using RAID. You may not be able to recover your data by putting the drives in another server. Especially if the original NAS is using hardware RAID.Reply

Most of these COTS NAS units (Synology / QNAP / Asustor etc.) don't use hardware RAID. Just take off the drives, plug them into a PC, make images and mount them. Linux systems can auto-recognize these RAID volumes. If using Windows, use something like UFS Explorer to get your data off it. That is the reason I like software RAID more than hardware RAID.Reply

I completely agree. I could really blow the doors off of a NAS custom build. But when I get home after a 12 hour day of Raid rebuilds, Backup restores and email issues, the last thin I want to do is build a boring little Linux storage box.My next NAS will eitehr be Synology or Qnap. Good balance of features, performance and most relevantly, a MATURE OS and firmware.Heck I may even throw performance out the window and pick up one of the hated DROBO NAS products. They aren't the fastest, and their 'beyondraid' is proprietary. But when I've used their products in professional environs they were easy to set up and worked. Albeit slooooowly.Besides, I've yet to meet a raid array level 5 or hhigher that can be migrated between devices without backing it up and restoring it to the "new" raid.Reply

He mentions ZFS so I guess he means the data integrity checking and self-healing of corrupted data features of ZFS and Btrfs. This is probably my main reason to go with ZFS or Btrfs for NAS devices especially when used for backup purposes.

Overtime, bits can just randomly flip on a hard drive (the drive is still perfectly fine). For example, old photos, music and videos all of sudden don't open or are distorted. RAID (at least most implementations I've seen) doesn't save you from random bit flipping. It's mainly for keeping a server up if a drive completely fails, not from file corruption.Reply

Without ECC, a scrub of a ZFS pool can corrupt your entire dataset. It happens, a lot. Regardless, ZFS provides better features like ARC, and full CoW. Ext4 RAID would be viable too, but for an average home user, ZFS is going to be too much because it has higher hardware requirements, requires a more advanced user, and will generally cost more money. Like Ganesh said, these cheapo units are good for simple HTPC stuff. Reply

Yes, the DS380 is pretty awesome-looking :) It keeps components cool.. only problem is footprint. The U-NAS NSC800 is pretty good too, smaller footprint - same as the DS1812+, but comes at the cost of airflow and cooling capability, obviously.Reply

It looks like you're using the default mount options for NFS and CIFS mounts on a CentOS 6.2 VM. It would be nice if you actually show what the mount options CentOS uses. For example, using mount without passing any options via the -o parameter to mount a CIFS share could result in the following default options:rw,relatime,vers=1.0,cache=strict,uid=1000,forceuid,gid=1000,forcegid,addr=123.123.123.123,file_mode=0666,dir_mode=0777,rsize=61440,wsize=65536,actimeo=1

rsize and wsize in particular could have a noticeable affect on performance.Reply

Let me get this one thing straight.Asustor wins Hands down in terms of performance compared to Synology or Qnap. So if performance is a concern you should get it. Purely because they are using much better hardware.

However DONT expect its features and software work anywhere as well as Qnap or Synology. If you are after those features, dont get the ASUSTOR yet. Its software properly still needs some time ( a year ? ) to mature. I have heard they are working on it. But as far as i know it still isn't quite there yet.Reply

I think this is even more relevant when talking about the entry level NAS from those brands, Asustor is doing a good job there. But does this one compare to DS414 in terms of performance? price-wise it's the same but it's saturating a single GbE link in many situations hence the second link...Reply

Why would you even use RAID in these? Look at the rebuild times (assuming it doesn't fail which however is pretty likes with 2 TB+ drives). It seems easier and faster to just copy back the data from your backup.Reply

You have a great point on those long rebuild times. It is during such stressing times that another drive might fail so with all eggs being put on the NAS is not such a good idea. Still people will backup periodically to a 4TB or bigger drive just to preserve some of their important data. It is a practise that cannot be forgotten even with a NAS. It STILL needs backup!.Reply

For my presonal NAS I simply can't afford to pay for the amount of backup that would entail. Instead I replicate the core of the data between two units at different locations.The stuff that I work with/use on a regular basis is not replicated. If I did it would replicate accidental deletions and changes.I'm working on getting some of my friends and family on board with this arrangement so that we are replicating each others data. Hence preserving it in case of theft fire or disaster. Reply

Can someone please explain to me why all NAS enclosures that have more than 2 bays are SO expensive? I mean, for $500 I can build a full power desktop and just install FreeNAS on it. At the same time I can buy a 2-bay NAS spec'd like this one for around $100. Then make the case twice as large and the price jumps up $400?!?! I am thoroughly confused by this phenomena.